The actor Segawa Kikunojo III as the Heron Maiden

Bundled against the cold, the Heron Maiden (Sagi Musume) stands beside a pond amid falling snow. Her role requires great skill, for the dance transforms the actor from heron to young maiden and back again, expressing emotions ranging from radiant love to utter despair. First staged in 1762, the Heron Maiden soon became a specialty of the female impersonator Segawa Kikunojō II. His bundled silk roving crest appears on the furisode in this print, but the girl’s hairstyle with its winglike side locks was one favored by that actor’s successor, Kikunojō III, after he assumed the name in 1774. One of the most celebrated onnagata in Kabuki history, Kikunojō III appears in three prints by Shunshō from the Grabhorn Collection (nos. 53, 56, 57). According to Edwin Grabhorn’s notes in Ukiyo-e: The Floating World, this print and Shunsō’s portrait of Ichikawa Danzō IV (no. 54) came from the same album, assembled in Edo in 1860.